


Moonlight Madness

by sunflowerwonder



Category: Homestuck
Genre: 1950s, House Party, M/M, Mutual Pining, New York, Pornography, Propositions, Recreational Drug Use, homophobic undertones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 11:36:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8247335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerwonder/pseuds/sunflowerwonder
Summary: “You’re among friends,” Dirk says.
“You’re too bold,” you reply.
“Maybe,” he says. “Dare me to go bolder?”
“Don’t exploit my curiosity.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Another Tumblr fic I'm archiving here. Title is both a bastardization of Ginsberg and in at least some portion a needless allusion to Reefer Madness.
> 
> Because this is the kind of weird shit I want to be dug up against me when I'm famous.

There’s a dozen and a half creators of all kinds scattered around the living room of the penthouse apartment, lain over couches and sprawled on lounge chairs and tripping over reefers. Yet amidst the surrounding chaos he’s a streak of solidity. He’s tall, put together, with too-styled hair and a pressed, if cuffed, shirt betraying his place as socially higher than his company. He looks comfortable leaned against the arm of the couch he rests on. His ankles are crossed where his feet have settled heavy on the coffee table. He’s the only one in the room without a light or drink except yourself.

You know him only second-hand as Dirk Strider, younger brother of famed artist and recent cinema mogul Dave Strider, of whom’s apartment the lot of you currently resided. Dirk doesn’t speak openly, as openly, as the men around him, but you find it more mysterious than a disgrace of trendy conversational ethics ravaging your group of friends. He’s brooding, but handsome. A thinner, weathered mirror of his brother with dark circles seemingly painted beneath his eyes.

There’s a scratch of jazz on the record when he looks to where you’re leaned against a wall at the edge of the party, watching him. You remember the fateful, jarring pitch of music because you use it as an excuse to duck away from his questioning gaze. It’s a pathetic little shrug, a sharp blade of social awkwardness that is thankfully masked by a sudden exclamation from the majority of the crowd and the flutter of photos that draws both your attentions away from their soon-to-be-forgotten exchange.

Dave Strider, your host, is exclaiming something that’s lost in a bubble of laughter from the wave of his surrounding entourage. A raid is taking place of a haphazard photography collection ripped from its nondescript holding box. The bits and pieces of photos, film negatives, and scrap paper soon coat the hands of their babbling audience. It’s easy to tell the contents are a scandalous affair. Dave’s face glows a frightful red as he attempts to recover the products of backalley exchanges, bedroom photoshoots, and hastily cut images from shameful magazines that, when clipped from their sinful shells, felt a little more alive.

They’re passed around the room to the great horror of their owner. Kisses and ruts and pure, uncensored contact that sends more than a few cheeks ruddy and a queue to build for the hall bathroom. None of the scraps stray as far as your secluded wall but you catch glimpses of the hubbub as they’re exchanged with fascinated horror.

They’re queer. Clearly. Nothing your adventures have failed to witness before, but a rare sight nonetheless. You wonder, briefly, about the extent of Dave Strider’s sexual appetites, before settling on the fact that it was hardly your business either or any way.

You watch Dirk, though, curiosity prickling at your neck and the back of your knuckles. You watch him be handed a photo by a colleague. You watch him appraise it how one would an antique. Careful. Diligent. The only clue that he finds any interest at all in the subjects is the slight parting of chapped lips—the palest glint of teeth obstructing the silent whistle of a sigh. Then, after a mere few moments of admiration, he passes the photograph to the man on his left (Egbert? You think his name is Egbert. A comic. You don’t know him.) who scoffs aloud at the image and moves to show it to the ragged, cityworn girl with cobwebbed hair beside him. She sits reclined on the coucharm like the junkie queen of an ancient kingdom, a reefer nestled elegantly between her middle fingers like it’s a Hollywood starlet’s cigarette holder. She examines the photo with a curled lip that reveals hidden, fang-like teeth. Her bark of responsive laughter sends a shadow across Dirk’s face.

Someone actually hands you a photo, now, the bulk of the party already fading their interest in the latest catch of excitement. Dave seems content to shake his empty container at everyone until they return the photographs to their rightful place. You spare one glance down at the one in your hand (a relatively chaste picture of a shirtless man pressing his lips to the underside of another, equally shirtless man’s jaw) before depositing it into the box a very exasperated Dave Strider rattles in front of you.

Rid of the picture, you look back to Dirk, as you had all evening, and settle yourself again into the decor of the apartment. He stares back, as he had before, but this time you refuse to allow your shock of anxiety to make you flinch away.

He pats Egbert on the shoulder and gives a kind, if brief, offer to excuse himself. Egbert shakes his hand and the two of them laugh over something lost to the low rumble of living room conversation.

Then, Dirk Strider approaches you.

“What’s it like?” he asks in introduction, settling an arm against the bookshelf beside you.

You look to him, apprehensive, and don’t say a word.

“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a wallflower,” he says, leaning close to you. “I like to shoot shit about being an inherently objective person, but I always find myself far too fuckin’ passionate to not get in on the action. Wallflowers are genuine to their ways. I’m not.”

You stare at him. Think. “It’s lonely,” you say, simply, after a too-long beat in the conversation, looking wearily at a bathroom clogged with a line of pornography viewers. There will be no convenient social escape for you today.

“It seems to me that such honesty would be, hypothetically, lovely,” he says. Then, softer, “You’re lovely.”

You swallow and he must sense your apprehension because he pulls back from you, his face a flash of cautiousness as you break eye contact with him to stare at the polished floor.

“You’re bold,” you somehow work up the nerve to respond. His hand finds yours and you tentatively scan the room to ensure no one is focusing their attention on the two of you.

“You’re among friends,” he says.

“You’re too bold,” you reply.

“Maybe,” he says. “Dare me to go bolder?”

“Don’t exploit my curiosity.”

He grins. “Go with me tonight.”

You feel your cheeks heat up as he rubs his thumb across yours. You stare at him in the settling silence.

“You’ve been looking at me all night.” He’s so close, so warm.

“That’s hardly a crime,” you say.

“You’re right, it’s so much greater,” he whispers back, suddenly quiet and near and quite near and you feel your knees threaten to give way when his other hand finds your waist and his lips find yours. It’s a slight, delicate brush that sends your breath askew. You heave a skittered rush of air.

“Go with me tonight,” he asks again, and in the fragile, precious moment you’re inclined to agree. “I’d like to know what it’s like to touch something so true.”


End file.
